In coming issues FTW will be looking at
bizarre but very well documented developments connected
to biowarfare, DNA sequencing, draconian "health care" legislation
and what appears to be a coming epidemic of manmade plagues.
As always, our reporting will be based upon what are known,
verifiable and unchallenged recent events. And, as always,
we will assume responsibility for the unpleasant task of
explaining them. Seemingly random yet connected events,
when they appear in large numbers, cannot be coincidence.
Mature thinking demands that they be explained. With the
recent deaths of 12 of the world’s leading microbiologists
-- soon to be the subject of a major FTW story -- along
with the introduction of the Model State Emergency Health
Powers Act in many state legislatures, a post-9/11 series
of related events demands explanation.

In this issue, geologist and author Dale
Allen Pfeiffer provides a chilling, terrifying model that
may explain these developments. As is so often the case
with a new and apparently accurate construct, it also helps
to explain other events, like an unending war against terror.
As Sherlock Holmes said, "Once you have eliminated
the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how unlikely,
must be the answer."

Let them that have eyes see and let them
that have ears hear.

Take this issue of FTW and read it like
you have never read before. Save it. Keep it close. Do
not throw it away. When you are over the shock, and as
events unfold, remember that human survival, perhaps your
own, depends upon accepting facts and not ignoring them.
There is now a credible and factually supported model,
which explains recent events better than anything I have
yet seen. That model says that the murder of 3-4 billion
people may occur within the next 10 years. I pray that
someone else will present a better one that will stand
the test of logical and fearless analysis.

·

From
The Wilderness

Michael
C. Ruppert

Publisher/Editor

Contributing
Editor ----------------- Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D.

Contributing
Editor - Energy -------------- Dale Allen Pfeiffer

Copy
Editor -------------------------------------Joe Taglieri

Web
Master---------------- Andrea Shepherd

Unless otherwise indicated,
all articles are written by Michael C. Ruppert.

-- "Nobody
moved for almost five hours."

NEAR CAPACITY
CROWDS TURN OUT TO HEAR MIKE RUPPERT LECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO -
Q&A LASTS FOR 2 à· HOURS

Near capacity crowds turned out in the
500 seat auditorium of the University of Toronto’s medical
school for two lectures, Jan 17th and 19th by FTW publisher
Michael Ruppert as he continues to use government documents,
insider books and reports, congressional records, and mainstream
press reports to expose US government complicity in and
foreknowledge of the attacks of last September 11th.

"We didn’t know how Canadians would
react," said the co-organizer of the event, Susan
Bulger-Bullen of Sumari seminars. "But their interest
was high and Mike’s detailed and documented evidence was
so compelling that I think he’s changed Toronto forever,
maybe Canada too." The
attendance the first day was only around 250-300 because
of confusion about the advertised location. However, the
second lecture was filled to near capacity in the double-decked
auditorium.

·"Once the lecture began, the audience
sucked up every bit of evidence Ruppert presented as though
they had just discovered water," Bulger-Bullen added. "Nobody
moved for five hours."

Using the same basic format as his November
28th lecture at PortlandStateUniversity,
Ruppert presented

newer material, including charts from
a two-part FTW series by geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer
(December/January) on the coming end of the age of oil
and the massive dislocations it is destined to produce. "It
is imperative," Ruppert said, "that people know
that world oil production will peak within the next five
years, never to be exceeded again," said Ruppert.· "This,
at a time when world population is rapidly increasing and
demand, especially in China, the Far East and the developing
world, is soaring. This is the reason for the wars that
will not end in our lifetimes."

In his two-plus-hour lecture Ruppert detailed
the meshing necessities for the CIA, acting as an agent
of globalization, to control both the drug cash and the
oil of Central Asia. "People
got it when I pointed out that even if we started on a
crash program to convert to other energy sources, the civilization
could not change away from oil quickly enough to avert
the crisis. And when I described the economic dislocations
involved, the millions of people who work in the plastics,
power, auto and oil industries who would be thrown out
of work in such an effort, people understood that this
crisis is not going away with wishful thinking. That doesn’t
even begin to consider all of the money that would be taken
out of the economy if those people lost their jobs."

"Mike did an absolutely amazing job
and was superbly eloquent," said Dr. Terry Burrows,
a Toronto psychiatrist
who attended both lectures. "No one in their right
mind can see the evidence that he has gathered and not
understand that this is a war against all peoples of the
world and that the official position is so absurd as to
be laughable."

Canada has
seen a flurry of legislation stripping the civil rights
of its citizens since September 11th. Bills C-36 and C-42
have stripped away many of the rights held sacred in Canada
and Canadians are becoming increasingly alarmed since their
combat troops have been sent to fight in Afghanistan. Canada
is widely known as a quiet nation, more peacekeeper than
war maker.

"What helped tremendously here was
getting Mike on local talk radio before the event. Canadians
tend to be skeptical, but Mike’s performance was amazing
and the buzz is still continuing. One guy who is writing
his doctoral thesis called and said that he would be using
Mike’s material for research," said co-organizer Loretta
Stirbys. "If we had him back here today we could bring
out a thousand people with no effort. I mean they gave
him a standing ovation and kept him going for almost three
hours with questions after the lecture. There were as many
people there at the end as when he began. Emails are still
flying all over Canada."

Mike lectures next at Schreiner University
in Kerrville, West Texas on January 30th. Additional lectures
are pending or confirmed in Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Sacramento, Detroit, New York City, Great Britain and Australia.
Please check here for
information on upcoming events.

Photos of the Toronto
event
Click on image to enlarge.

Part
II in FTW’s Series on the End of the Age of Oil - Population
Reduction of 3 Billion A Global Necessity?

What Will Be
the Next Target of the Oil Coup?

by

Dale Allen Pfeiffer

FTW, January 29, 2002 -- If it is true
that an oil coup has taken control in this country and
is seeking to consolidate its power throughout the world,
based on the fact that world oil and natural gas production
are set to go into decline, then what does this hold for
the future? Using this as our hypothesis, we should be
able to predict future military actions by comparing production
profiles for various oil producing countries with the political
climate within these same countries. For this purpose,
we are using production profiles developed by Richard C.
Duncan and Walter Youngquist through the use of their World
Oil Forecasting Program in 1998.1 The data has changed
very little since that time, except for a slight upgrade
in projected Caspian Sea oil reserves and a slightly higher
than projected oil demand. In addition to oil production
there are also other factors which need to be taken into
account, such as other resource deposits, demand, and population.
Not all of these factors are as well documented as oil
production, and so we will use this as our focal point,
adding in other information where available.

Finally, we have to wonder not only about
the motives of this supposed oil coup, but we also need
to speculate on whether the perpetrators fully understand
the implications of energy depletion. In other words, will
they be able to hold on to their power in the face of the
breakdown of civilization? And what might they do if they
thought they were losing control?

First let us look at the situation in
North America, as reported by Duncan and Youngquist.

North American Oil Production

The United States was the first country
to peak in its oil production, back in 1970. The United
States exploited its oil to provide the standard of living
enjoyed today. However, after 1970 the continuation of
this standard of living has depended upon increasing imports
of oil. Notice the slight raising and leveling off of the
production curve in the early 1980s as oil from Prudhoe
Bay, Alaska was brought on line. The Prudhoe Bay fields
peaked in 1985 and have been in decline since. At one time,
the USA had abundant, easily exploited oil reserves --
production peaked at over 4 billions barrels per day --
but those days are behind us now. Even the Alaska National
Wildlife Arctic Reserves (ANWAR) will make little difference
to this picture.

Not long after the United States peak,
resources in Mexico and Canada came on line, providing
some salvation in the regional picture. However, the resources
of both countries taken at their peaks do not equal the
peak production of the United States. Mexico peaked a year
ago, while Canada is not expected to peak for another 10
years.

In the overall regional picture, you can
see the United States peak in 1970, followed by a short
decline and then a recovery. As a region, North America
peaked in 1985. After a slight secondary peak taking place
right now, North American oil production is expected to
plummet. The only untapped reserves left in this region
are in ANWAR, and their affect would be negligible on this
graph. Tar sands and shale deposits in Canada may contain
the equivalent of more than 150 billion barrels of oil
which could theoretically become economical to produce
once conventional deposits are in decline. However, it
is unlikely that production can be brought on line quickly
enough to offset the shock of conventional oil depletion.2
Beyond this, there are grave environmental problems associated
with the exploitation of these deposits. Namely, the tar
sands and oil shales can only be harvested through massive
strip mining. And, once the oil has been extracted, there
will be literally thousands of tons of sand and shale slag
to be dealt with, not to mention other more harmful wastes.

Where are We to Turn?

Contrary to what you might think, the
United States does not receive the bulk of its oil imports
from the Middle East. Thus far, our oil imports have come
from South and Central America, chiefly Venezuela and Colombia.
Venezuela alone accounts for more than 53% of the oil in
this region.3 However, Venezuelan oil production already
appears to be peaking a little sooner than Duncan and Youngquist’s
program predicted.

Venezuela also holds what is perhaps the
world’s greatest deposit of unconventional oil: the Orinoco
oil belt, which contains an estimated 1.2 trillion barrels
of the sludge known as heavy oil. This is a great resource;
however, it is known as heavy sludge because it is highly
contaminated by sulfur and heavy metals. The removal and
disposal of these elements would have to be attained without
destroying the economic viability of the deposits. And,
as with the Canadian oil sands, such a project is unlikely
to be brought on line in time to offset the shock of declining
oil production.

Colombia’s oil deposits are predicted
to peak around 2010. Unfortunately, they are unlikely to
produce more than one third of a billion barrels per day
at peak. There is currently a lot of speculation about
a major oil strike in the southeastern foothills of Colombia's
Andes. Geologists in the area have made some interesting
discoveries, but nothing has been confirmed as of yet.
It has long been suspected that a major field must exist
somewhere between the Venezuelan oil fields and the oil
shales of the Peruvian Andes. Yet, with all our modern
probing, this field has failed to turn up. This author
suspects that exploration in Colombia will turn up no new,
major oil fields -- though it may turn up minor deposits.
This author suspects that the mother lode of South American
hydrocarbon deposits has already been found, in the form
of the Orinoco heavy oil sludge.

In any case, it is quite plain the United
States needs the oil of this region. And production of
these oil resources is threatened by political instabilities.
Colombia is a divided country rocked by over 50 years of
civil war. And Venezuela has also become increasingly unstable
in just the past year. President Hugo Chavez has been bucking
US imperialism and oil interests for some time now. A new
Hydrocarbons Law, which took effect at the beginning of
2002, will require that state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela
SA hold a minimum 51% stake in future joint ventures involving
exploration and exploitation. And the law will impose the
world’s highest royalty rates on companies operating in
Venezuela's oil fields. President Chavez insists that such
a move is necessary to rescue the Venezuelan economy and
to help ease poverty in the country. Similar moves toward
nationalization in the past led to US backed coups in Guatemala
and Iran, to site just two examples.4 Early in November
2001, the National Security Agency, the Pentagon and the
US State Department held a two-day meeting on US policy
toward Venezuela. This meeting was supposedly held in response
to a Chavez statement that the US was fighting "terrorism
with terrorism." It is quite likely that among the
options discussed at this meeting was a coup against Chavez.5
Elsewhere in South America, Ecuador almost fell a year
ago to a grassroots coalition of peasants and Indians.
Farther south, Bolivia has been destabilized by a peasants’ revolt
sparked by privatization of their water supply. Even farther
south, in Argentina, the economy has crashed and the government
has dissolved. People are rioting and looting grocery stores.
Brazil has been economically shaken by the fall of Argentina
and by the growing strength of the MST -- the landless
peasant movement. In fact, it would be difficult to find
a truly stable government anywhere in South America at
this time.

Under Clinton and Bush II, the United
States has poured billions worth of military aid into Colombia,
ostensibly to fight the drug war, though our support has
gone to military and paramilitary units rife with drug
trafficking. The US is currently sponsoring a massive defoliation
program in Colombia, and we are increasing the number of
US military advisors in the country. FARC, the rebel force
which controls half of the country, has pledged to target
US personnel. And there is word from the state department,
since September 11th, that we will consider rebel forces
in Colombia to be international terrorists. This author
looks for a terrorist/drug war in Colombia which will probably
spill over into Venezuela and Ecuador, maybe even Peru.
A war in this region will be long and bloody, and may make
Vietnam look like a Sunday picnic.

The Former Soviet Union

All lumped together under the title Former
Soviet Union, we have not only Russia proper, but also
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the Caspian Sea
region. This graph is probably the least accurate of Duncan
and Youngquist’s predictions, due to lack of data at the
time they modeled this graph and also due to exigencies
of politics and economics. Duncan and Youngquist did under-assess
the Caspian Sea resources, though the correct figures make
little difference in their overall world predictions. Most
importantly, they did not figure on Russia opening up oil
production and exportation to the extent that it has at
present, purely due to economic factors.

The oil coup has already moved in this
region -- the attack on Afghanistan only being the most
visible evidence of this. Perhaps more importantly for
their interests, the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have opened their countries to
the presence of NATO forces. Bases have already been established
in all of these countries. It is certain that deals have
also been hammered out with these countries for the exploitation
of their oil and natural gas resources.

It is also very likely that the oil coup
has its eyes on Russia itself. In this case, Russia’s nuclear
might precludes an overt attack. Through the 1990s, western
financiers looted the Russian economy until there was hardly
anything left. At present, Putin has no choice but to open
up oil exports just to keep his government solvent. Russian
President Vladimir Putin has placed himself as a vassal
to the oil coup; however, he is not entirely happy with
the actions of the western states. Bush’s rush for a missile
defense system would negate Russia’s last claim to superpower.
We can only hope that the oil coup is not foolish enough
to provoke a nuclear war with Russia.

The Middle East

It is in the Middle East that the real
grab for world power will be played out. According to Duncan
and Youngquist’s model, by 2007 the Middle East will dominate
the world in oil production. This will be the last region
where oil production will peak, according to Duncan and
Youngquist’s model, sometime around 2011. And the oil of
the Middle East lies largely in the provinces of five countries:
Iran, Iraq, The United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Saudi
Arabia.

All but two of these countries are closely
tied to the United States and are likely to be players
in the oil coup. The exceptions are Iraq and Iran. Iraq’s
ability to export oil has been severely restricted since
the first Gulf War. Likewise, Iran faced stiff embargoes
following the fall of the Shah in the 1970’s. However,
in neither of these countries does the oil coup have clear
control over oil resources. Likewise, both countries are
targeted as terrorist states. Right now, Israel and powers
in the United States are lobbying strongly to make Iraq
the next target in the "War Against Terrorism." Rumor
has it that this war is slated to begin early in 2002.
This author would suggest that, after finishing off Saddam
Hussein, the oil coup will then set its sites on Iran.
We can say with certainty that the oil coup will want to
have both these countries firmly in control before the
OPEC crossover event.

But how stable are the governments of
the other three major Arab states? The Saudi royals sit
very uneasily on their throne. The hundreds of princes
which make up the house of Fahd are extremely unpopular
due to their own corruption—both economic and moral. National
Security Agency electronic intercepts demonstrate that
the Saudi princes routinely pay protection money to Islamic
extremists, including Hamas and Al Qa’ida. NSA and CIA
analysts have noted that it would not take much for an
Islamic fundamentalist coup to overthrow the royals. Likewise,
a secret CIA study put together in the mid-1980s concludes
that terrorists with only a handful of explosives could
take the Saudi oil fields off line for two years.

·The oil producing Arab states, led by
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have all seen large population
increases since they began pumping oil. In a couple of
generations, they have gone from being simple nomadic peoples
to sophisticated urbanites. All of these countries have
highly developed welfare states financed by oil money.
Unfortunately for them, the rate of population growth has
exceeded their ability to financially support the population.
It is for this reason that the Arab countries were exceeding
their oil quotas throughout the late-1990s, in an effort
to cover the expenses of their welfare systems. And let
us not forget that these are all desert nations. By the
year 2020, all of these countries will have passed peak
oil production and be in decline. By that time, none of
them will be able to support their populations.6 The result
will be starvation, economic disaster and civil unrest.
How will the oil coup hope to hold this ship together?

Projections

Based on the analysis presented above,
we believe that the most likely targets in the "War
on Terrorism" will be Iraq, Iran, Colombia, Venezuela,
and possibly (though hopefully not) Russia. That there
will be actions in other theatres is certain. It is very
likely that Somalia will be targeted soon. And, as they
hold the world’s richest deposit of uranium, Somalia is
not without valuable resources. Other Middle Eastern or
Central Asian nations not mentioned here could also be
targeted for a number of reasons, energy resources among
them. Likewise Indonesia, if that country became too unstable.
Then there are actions which could be strictly political,
or which could be viewed as vendettas. North Korea, the
Philippines, and Cuba could fall into this category. Yet,
it is FTW’s belief that the main targets for military action
in the years to come will be those stated in the first
sentence of this paragraph.

Will the oil coup be successful? That
is to be doubted. Just as the Middle Eastern countries
can expect problems because their population will surpass
their ability to care for them, so will the rest of the
world. The entire civilization is apt to break down chaotically,
in ways that no one can foresee. Possibly the greatest
single problem resulting from all this will be the failure
of modern agriculture. Without petroleum-based fertilizers
and pesticides, experts predict that world agriculture
will only be able to comfortably support a population of
two billion.7 The current world population is over six
billion.

What will the members of the oil coup
do when they realize they are losing control? If faced
with starving, angry masses throughout the world—in the
first world as well as the third world -- what would be
the response of the oil coup? Would they roll over and
die, or would they strike back with everything available?
It is truly to be hoped that they do not foresee this contingency,
or they may decide to unleash biological warfare on the
population of the entire world.

ENDNOTES:

1. THE WORLD PETROLEUM
LIFE-CYCLE, Richard C. Duncan and Walter Youngquist.
Presented at the PTTC Workshop "OPEC Oil Pricing
and Independent Oil Producers," Petroleum Technology
Transfer Council Petroleum Engineering Program, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles, California; October
22, 1998. http://dieoff.com/page133.htm
A PDF Version of this paper is available athttp://www.dieoff.com/page133.pdf

SPY CASE IN
CANADIAN COURTS SUGGESTS US NAVAL OFFICER HAD FOREKNOWLEDGE
OF 9/11

EDITORIAL NOTE: In our original story
we indicated that the note written by Delmart "Mike" Vreeland
had been sealed in court records. We based this on a misreading
of Canadian press stories. In fact, the warning of the
World Trade Center attacks, written by Vreeland on either
August 11th or 12th has been introduced into open evidence
in Vreeland’s case in Toronto. Using court records in our
possession, FTW has scanned the document and it is available
for download at http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/1252_rev_12802.html.·
We apologize for the error. Following is a revised story which we feel is the
best way to present this important information in context.]

----------

FTW, TORONTO, January 25, 2002, [Revised
January 28, 2002] - Delmart Edward "Mike" Vreeland,
an American citizen whose claims to being a US Naval Lieutenant
assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) are
being increasingly corroborated in open court, has been
in a Canadian jail since December 6, 2000. On August 11th
or 12th of 2001, the date is uncertain, after trying to
verbally alert his Canadian jailers to the coming World
Trade Center attacks, he wrote down key information and
sealed it in an envelope which he then had placed in jailers’ custody.
This event is not disputed by Canadian authorities. The
letter specifically listed a number of targets including
The Sears Towers, The World Trade Center, The White House,
The Pentagon, The World Bank, The Canadian parliament building
and the Royal Bank in Toronto. A chilling sentence follows
the list of targets, "Let one happen. Stop the rest!!!"

When the envelope was opened on September
14th it set off alarms in the US and Canada.

The US wants Vreeland back in the States
on a Michigan warrant for credit card fraud -- using his
own credit card. Vreeland, convinced that a return to the
US means certain death, wants to stay in Canada in a witness
protection program. His lawyers Rocco Galati and Paul Slansky,
two former Canadian prosecutors, agree with Vreeland’s
assessment. They should. Both have been the victims of
harassment and threats, including dead cats hung on porches
and car windows smashed out in car burglaries.

The position of the United States government,
as represented by Crown Solicitors in Toronto, is that
all of this is nonsense. Vreeland, says the Navy, was discharged
as a Seaman after a few months of service for unsatisfactory
performance in 1986. He has never had anything to do with
intelligence according to 1200 pages of Navy records filed
in Toronto Superior Court.

"How is it," says Galati, "that
the Navy says that he was only in the service a few months,
and then send us a 1200- page personnel file? Some of the
entries are obvious forgeries or alterations, and the sanitizing
of his records was done so hurriedly that some dates of
medical exams in the 1990s were left intact."

In a January 10, 2002 tactic worthy of
Perry Mason, with the greatest possible risk to his client
if it failed, attorney Slansky got the judge to agree to
let him call the Pentagon from open court. Using a speaker
phone, in front of at least six witnesses, Slansky first
dialed directory information and got a number for the Pentagon
switchboard. Then, calling that number he asked the Department
of Defense operator to locate the office of Lieutenant
Delmart Vreeland. Within moments the operator had confirmed
Vreeland’s posting, his rank as a Lt. O-3, his room number
and gave Slansky his direct-dial number. All of this is
a part of the court record.

On January 17, as this writer sat in the
courtroom, another mind-numbing event occurred.

As Vreeland sat shackled in a corner,
closely flanked by two guards, the Crown Solicitor sought
to debunk Vreeland’s assertions that he had been assigned
to travel to Moscow to review and retrieve highly technical
and classified documents pertaining to Russian and Chinese
efforts to counter the proposed US "Star Wars" missile
defense system. [Ed. note: FTW believes this to be a cover
story.] "Why," said the Crown Solicitor, "would
the US choose, in a case involving some of the most highly
technical intelligence, a random seaman with training in
the tool and die field." The point that someone discharged
in 1986 with no special training and rank would be sent
to review technical documents sounded reasonable - assuming
that Vreeland’s background was as the Solicitor argued.

But the reasonableness vanished a few
moments later as the Crown Solicitor argued that Vreeland,
who has been in jail and without access to a computer for
13 months, had somehow cracked the Pentagon’s personnel
records and inserted his name, an office number, and telephone
extension into the Pentagon database.

No one except for Vreeland and attorney
Galati seemed to notice the contradiction.

The Crown Solicitor ventured further through
the looking glass by then arguing that Vreeland, having
certain papers in his possession at the time of his arrest,
had memorized Russian and Albanian documents and then had
translated them from memory. Vreeland doesn’t speak Russian
or Albanian. The judge, noticing this stretch of credibility,
asked the Solicitor to restate the point. The argument
then became that Vreeland had an unnamed colleague go to
an unspecified web site, print Russian and Albanian documents
for him, and then used foreign language dictionaries to
translate them.

Vreeland’s extradition process could take
years, and his time in jail has not been easy. There have
been threats, illnesses and his every move is watched.
Galati and Slansky wonder how long his psyche will hold
up. The history of jailhouse deaths of key witnesses leans
heavily in favor of Vreeland’s belief that he could be
killed at any moment. His apparent strategy is to not reveal
any accurate Top Secret material to either his lawyers
or the press, hoping that his silence will provide him
with some support from US clandestine services. This is
a standard approach taken in dozens of similar cases researched
by FTW in the past. They include the cases - well known
in research circles - of William Tyree and Michael Riconosciuto.
Tyree has been jailed on a questionable murder conviction
since 1979, and Riconosciuto on a variety or drug-related
charges since the early-1990s. Both men have been directly
connected to CIA and other intelligence operations by official
documents.

"We don’t need to know, and we don’t
want to know the secret details, "says Galati. "They’re
not necessary for us to do the job of keeping our client
alive and in Canada. He faces a special danger in the US
because he has also been an informant against an organized
crime family in Michigan where the criminal charges originate.
The most he is facing there is two years, but we believe
he might not live for two days in that system."

Additional press reports indicate that
Vreeland’s intelligence work was connected to drug smuggling
- a much more likely reason for his trip to Moscow. And
the history of the relations between Naval Intelligence
and the mafia is documented as far back as the Second World
War when ONI officers made deals with convicted mafia don
Lucky Luciano and his lieutenant, Vito Genovese, to protect
New York docks and assist with the subsequent Allied invasion
and occupation of Italy.

Mike Vreeland is one man who, in a rational
world, could totally expose the complicity of the US government
in the attacks of September 11th. No one has disputed what
he wrote and stuffed into that envelope. In a rational
world that would be the most pressing and public inquiry
of all. The two questions remaining are whether Vreeland
will live, and whether or not he will ever tell what he
knows. That may be a mutually exclusive proposition.

FTW has retained the services of freelance
journalist Greta Knutsen in Toronto to report on developments
in this critical case for our subscribers. Important updates
will be posted and sent out via subscriber bulletin to
our readers as they become available.

FTW, January 15, 2002 - In the exploding
popcorn mix of new Enron investigations, increasingly focusing
on possible criminal misconduct by accounting giant Arthur
Andersen, a Justice Department spokesperson told FTW that
a contract for Andersen to review sensitive FBI management
and recordkeeping procedures has been unaffected.

Recent statements by Senators Joseph Lieberman
(D-CT) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) indicating that investigations
of Andersen may turn criminal, and a January 14th commentary
by CNN’s Lou Dobbs indicating that the scandal may put
the company out of business, raise serious questions about
the Department of Justice’s contract calling for Andersen
to "review the FBI’s management practices, including
recordkeeping, technology and human resources issues," as
described in an August 29, 2001 story by reporter Kellie
Lunney on the website www.GovExec.com.
This is especially relevant since FBI agents will themselves
be investigating Andersen in newly announced DoJ probes
related to Enron.

The Gov Exec story, relying on documents
from the Federal Register, detailed that, "In July,
Justice and FBI officials revealed that more than 400 weapons
and 180 laptop computers -- including some holding sensitive
and classified information - were missing from the agency.
The FBI has faced harsh criticism over the last few months,
most notably for its failure to turn over all documents
to lawyers for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, a
controversy that resulted in a temporary postponement of
McVeigh’s execution."

In August, Attorney General John Ashcroft
authorized the creation of a special commission to evaluate
years of serious and well-documented FBI lapses ranging
from mishandling of key evidence in the crime lab, as exposed
by FBI whistleblower Fred Whitehurst, to the loss of sensitive
intelligence materials. Commission members include former
CIA Director William Webster, former Secretary of Defense
William Cohen, former House Speaker Tom Foley and former
HUD Secretary and US Trade Rep Carla Hills.

According to the GovExec story, "All
of the commission’s meetings will be closed to the public
to protect sensitive information…according to a July 16
memo from the Justice Department." The key question
is, "Information sensitive to whom, that might damage
whose interests?"

DoJ spokesman Brian Sierra indicated on
January 14th, that the issue of Andersen’s contract, which
would give them access to many of the FBI’s most sensitive
files, has not yet been raised in the wake of the rapidly
evolving Enron debacle. "As of this moment the contract
is still in effect," said Sierra. "I can’t speak
to the issue and I don’t think the question has been brought
up at Justice."

Spokespersons for Andersen, headquartered
in Chicago, did not return an FTW call asking for comment.

The obvious conflict of interest could
not come at a worse time for an Administration that is
frantically attempting to get ahead of the Enron scandal.
It also comes at a time when the impartiality of other
government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange
Commission and the General Accounting Office, is called
into question because of the past relationships of the
heads of those two agencies with the embattled accounting
firm. Harvey Pitt at SEC once represented Andersen in his
private law practice. GAO chief David Walker is a former
board member at Andersen whose tenure there ended in late-1998,
long after the time period in which Andersen has been implicated
in the falsifications of Enron’s financial statements which
began in 1997.

Walker’s former partners may now become
the subject of criminal probes by the FBI, the SEC and
the GAO. Unlike the SEC and the FBI, the GAO is known as
the investigative arm of Congress -- the same Congress
which is now representing itself to be the champion of
the public interest. Headed by Walker in the Comptroller
General position, the GAO remains one of the last defensible
positions that the government (both the White House and
the Legislature) can offer as a statement of government
credibility to an increasingly cynical population.

The notion that Andersen could now be
trusted to investigate the FBI and gain access to information
that would damage the FBI’s credibility, and possibly be
traded off for softer handling for its own actions, stretches
the imagination to the breaking point and beyond. Congress
and the administration need to understand that that by
failing to walk the most perfect of lines with Enron and
Andersen, they risk the credibility of the entire government
-- and not just the Bush White House.

A previous FTW story on unexplored conflicts
of interest related to Enron is located at:

THE PROFITS
OF DEATH - Part III in a Special FTW Series on Insider
Trading and September 11th

ALL ROADS LEAD
TO DEUTSCHEBANK AND HARKEN ENERGY, W’s OWN 1991 INSIDER
TRADING SCAM - THE MOTHER OF ALL ENRONS

by Tom Flocco and
Michael C. Ruppert

Edited by Michael
C. Ruppert

----------

[Editor’s Notes - In Part I of this series
FTW, thanks to the brilliant research of Tom Flocco, demonstrated
that the CIA has, in fact, been involved in monitoring
stock trades on world financial markets, and that current
CIA executives have had recent business relationships with
firms handling obvious insider trades connected to the
attacks of September 11th. Those connections ran directly
into the heart of German financial giant Deutschebank.
In Part II we documented that a former Deutschebank executive,
Kevin Ingram, had recently been convicted on drug and money
laundering charges that were directly a result of attempts
to arm Islamic terrorist groups. Now in Part III, we conclude
this series by revealing a devastating conflict of interest
in investigating these leads on the part of President George
W. Bush by virtue of his own past insider trading through
Harken Energy in Bahrain and Kuwait.

The Administration’s apparently deliberate
omission of key mid-Eastern banks in these two countries
from post 9/11 investigations suggests clearly that the
principal financial institutions of the countries where
Harken did business have something to hide which the Bush
Administration does not want to see the light of day -
especially as potentially explosive Enron investigations
gather steam.

After our publication of Part II a number
of careful FTW readers were careful to point out that our
description of "put" options was oversimplified
to the point of describing a short-sell, rather than the
more highly leveraged "put option." We acknowledge
this error but re-emphasize that the point of these stories
- which could easily be sidetracked into lengthy and detailed
discussions of the workings of financial instruments -
is not the trades themselves, but who might have made the
trades, why they made them and, most importantly, why the
Bush Administration wants so desperately to conceal information
about them from the world. - MCR]

----------

FTW, January 9, 2001 -- President George
W. Bush may have personal reasons for hampering investigations
into insider trading connected to the attacks of September
11th. There is substantial evidence suggesting that a detailed
investigation into Deutschebank’s connection to Islamic
terrorists and 9/11 might reopen a mysteriously closed
1991 investigation of criminal insider trading connected
to Harken Energy, a Houston company where George W. Bush
served on the board of directors as a major stockholder
with his some of his father's key campaign contributors.
On January 30, 1990 Harken, with a remarkably unsuccessful
history of drilling projects, signed major oil drilling
contracts with Bahrain. Five months later, Bush's company
suffered an unexplained huge loss of stock value just prior
to the Gulf War -- but not before the future president
had already cashed out, making close to a million dollars
selling his own stock. Because of 9/11 leads suggesting
the possible involvement of certain Arab banks in financing
the attacks, a conflict of interest exists, clearly limiting
how far the President would be willing to pursue the most
obvious leads. And US government investigations since 9/11
have avoided looking at key Middle Eastern banks in Bahrain
and Kuwait already linked to terrorist activities.

In fact, two banks located in Bahrain
and Kuwait - The Faysal Islamic Bank and the Kuwait Finance
House - which had been listed in European reports as having
terrorist ties were glaringly omitted from George W Bush’s
financial crackdown after September 11th. [Source: The
Inner City Press, 9-11-99.] Both banks have correspondent
relationships with Deutschebank.

In spite of mounting evidence of a number
of connections between German financial giant Deutschebank
and the terrorist attacks of September 11 - including previously
documented links to insider trading based upon events of
9/11 - no press agency or government entity is questioning
why certain banking institutions in Kuwait and Bahrain
with deep financial ties to the Bush family have been overlooked
in the President’s supervision of a so-called "worldwide
crackdown on terrorist financing." Reuters reported
on November 7, 2001 that the Treasury Department added
61 additional people and organizations to the President’s
original Executive Order of September 23rd ·-- including
banks in Somalia and Nassau, The Bahamas. But mysteriously,
no banks in Bahrain, Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia were named
in either the original order or its expansion.

Just 32 days before the attack on the
World Trade Center and Pentagon, a Financial Times of Asia
(FT) Wire-Business Line report linked Deutschebank to the
United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Pakistani
and Afghani heroin smuggling, and money laundering of narcotics
proceeds (8-10-2001). Retired Pakistani intelligence
chief Brig Imtiaz was jailed for eight years on July 31,
2001 for laundering heroin profits -- for covert actions
-- via a CIA-linked drug smuggling cell, using Deutschebank
and other financial entities and properties.

Former State Department official Jonathan
Weiner confirmed that Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and
the United Arab Emirates have been of little help to federal
officials regarding known terrorist funds moving back and
forth between those countries. Weiner made these statements
in a National Public Radio (NPR) interview on November
21, 2001.

Weiner told host Linda Wertheimer, "Since
September 11th, all those countries have frozen accounts
or have looked in their banking systems for the money of
people associated with terrorist finance, [and] have gone
through the entire list provided by the United States."

He added that "country after country
has announced, ‘We’ve looked for funds. We’ve looked diligently.
We’ve been ready to freeze some funds. We just haven’t
found anything.’ No money in the UAE, no money in Kuwait." Weiner
then revealed, "There is, I can tell, no money announced
in Saudi Arabia, none announced in Bahrain. Well, given
that we know [that terrorist] funds came out of there and
we know [that terrorist] funds went back there, their inability
to find funds is pretty astonishing," said the former
State Department official.

While 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudis,
it is Bahrain and Kuwait’s strange lack of assistance in
ferreting out terrorist financial support and insider trading
evidence that raises questions, given their extremely close
ties to both Bush presidents.

The close financial relationships of both
Bush 41 and Bush 43 (referring to their respective presidencies)
with government officials of Bahrain as stockholders via
Texas corporation Harken Energy, which had secured major
drilling rights came during the period when the elder Bush
and his advisor son were making US military decisions prior
to the Gulf War. Many Harken investors were major campaign
donors to Bush 41.

Current President Bush made his first
million dollars as a result of a classic insider stock
trade -- directly related to the sale of his stock in Harken. Moreover,
Bush’s oil stock sale was finalized immediately prior to
Iraq‘s invasion of Kuwait -- at the height of its share
price -- before plummeting days later on news of Iraq’s
invasion.

George W. avoided prosecution, thanks
to some "well-connected" lawyers, and a soft
investigation of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
violations -- supervised by a presidential parent who pulled
the strings with SEC enforcement staff. George H. W. Bush,
the elder is a hero, an icon, with his picture in Kuwaiti
public buildings, and has been a regular visitor to Kuwait
since US the Gulf War.

However, considering that Kuwait Finance
House and Faysal Islamic Bank of Bahrain are both correspondent
banks with Deutschebank, questions remain as to why President
Bush would not place them on his list of banks under scrutiny
for terrorist ties, given the German bank’s many links
to the 9/11 attacks .

BANKING ON TERRORISM

According to German news weekly Der Spiegel,
Deutschebank handled accounts for the bin Laden family
worth $103 million British pounds (The London Guardian,
10-1-2001).

The New York Times (9-29-2001) added that
FBI officials are "focusing more than ever on Germany," and
in particular, an apartment used by Mohamed Atta -- considered
the lead hijacker -- and Ramzi Muhammad Abdullah Bin Al
Shibh, who also shared the apartment with other hijackers.
Fox News and the Washington Post both reported on January
2, 2001 that Al Shibh wired $14,000 to Zacarias Moussaoui,
now in US custody and referred to as the "20th hijacker."

An American official said "It looks
like it was organized in Germany...there is clear evidence
of meetings between Mr. Atta, Mr. al-Shehhi, and Mr. Jarrah,
three of the four suspected hijackers," according
to the Times.

Mamoun Darkanzanli, a Syrian businessman
whose bank accounts were frozen after the attacks, has
been implicated by American officials as an associate of
Osama bin Laden who took part in a 1996 attack on US troops
at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. US officials say
currently jailed terrorist and bin Laden’s highest ranking
associate in US custody -- Mamdouh Mahmud Salim -- named
Darkazanli as the co-signer of Salim’s bank account at
Deutschebank in Hamburg, also according to the Times. The
bin Laden family, with whom the Bushes have had long standing
business deals through The Carlyle Group, was later awarded
the contract to rebuild the facility.

The New York paper reported that Deutschebank
was also linked to Wadih el-Hage, a naturalized American
citizen from Lebanon who served as bin Laden’s personal
secretary at his Sudan office, and was named by prosecutors
as also setting up terrorist front businesses for bin Laden
in Kenya during 1994.

El-Hage’s business card lists Mamoun Darkazanli’s
current apartment as his Hamburg address, while his confiscated
address book lists Darkazanli’s address, phone numbers
and yet another Deutschebank account in Hamburg (but not
the same account) as Salim’s.

Investigators also suspect that Darkazanli
was supporting bin Laden’s Al-Q’aeda network financially,
using Deutschebank as his supporting entity for terrorism.

According to the Asian Wall Street Journal
(9-28-2000), insiders familiar with the family say the
bin Ladens do most of their banking with the London branch
of Deutschebank and the Saudi National Commercial Bank;
however, they also use Citigroup, a bank long linked to
drug money laundering and on whose board of directors sit
former CIA Director John Deutch and former Treasury Secretary
Robert Rubin. Rubin is also the former CEO of Goldman Sachs
which was once the home of convicted Deutschebank drug
money launderer Kevin Ingram (See Part II).

DEUTSCHEBANK’S "CORRESPONDING" LACK
OF INTELLIGENCE

Michigan Senator Carl Levin’s Minority
Banking Report of February 2001 calls correspondent banking
the "gateway to money laundering," a financial
technique wherein illicit money is moved from bank to bank
with "no questions asked," thereby cleansing
funds prior to being used for legitimate purposes. Via
correspondent banking relationships, banks not licensed
in the US may gain access to American financial markets
by establishing a correspondent relationship with banks
that are. Deutschebank is licensed in the US and maintained
offices at the World Trade Center. All US Deutschebank
records were destroyed in the September 11 attacks.

An obvious question then is why none of
these Middle Eastern financial institutions have felt the
sting of US investigative wrath since the attacks.

In another curious disclosure, the FBI
also says al Shamal Islamic Bank (Osama bin Laden’s personal
bank) -- headquartered in Khartoum, Sudan, which the terrorist
leader helped capitalize with $50 million in private funds
-- "is being investigated by US or overseas authorities." According
to US News (10-8-2001), the Bureau won’t say which authority. President
Bush, however, has failed to place Osama bin Laden's al
Shamal Islamic Bank in his Executive Order -- freezing
all of its correspondent transactions with other banks
of the world.
[See http://www.banking.state.ny.us/
il01102a.pdf ]

This is especially strange, since the
Washington Post (9-29-2001) reported that a an unnamed
bin Laden associate testified (at the US trial on the 1998
African embassy bombings) that "$250,000 was wired
from al Shamal Islamic Bank directly into the bin Laden
cohort’s Texas bank account -- where he used it to buy
a plane delivered to bin Laden... intended to transport
Stinger missiles...." Two months later, FT (11-29-2001)
offered more information, reporting that "The money
was wired from the Wadi al Aqiq account at al Shamal bank
via Bank of New York to a Bank of America account held
in Dallas, Texas by Essam al Ridi. Al Ridi, an Egyptian
flight instructor who met bin Laden in Pakistan in 1985,
flew the plane to Khartoum."

Congress has not sought to inquire as
to whether bin Laden's Stinger missiles were flown directly
out of Texas, or how his fellow terrorists were able to
buy a plane in Dallas to illegally transport arms, or how
a bin Laden associate was able to become a Texas flight
instructor -- let alone whether he taught other terrorists
how to fly airplanes in Dallas.

A Financial Times of Asia Wire story (8-10-2001)
revealed that dirty money profits for covert actions resulting
from CIA-linked heroin smuggling (which is a primary means
of financing terrorist operations) through Pakistan and
Northern Afghanistan have been shown to find their way
into the international banking system. This was the role
played by Kevin Ingram, formerly of Deutschebank in New
York as described in Part II of this series.

And while US News (10-8-2001) reported
that FBI officials say Deutschebank is "being investigated
by US or overseas authorities," again the Bureau will
not say which authorities, indicating that the US may not
even be taking a lead role in investigating the matter.

A spokesman for Deutschebank said it had
provided investigators with information on accounts linked
to members of the bin Laden family (The Guardian, 10-1-2001). No
further information has been made public.

Meanwhile, continued and current revelations
indicate that negligence and the "prior-knowledge
issue" -- insider trading or otherwise -- will not
go away. An executive at a Pan Am flight school in Minnesota
told Rep. James L. Oberstar (D-MN) and Rep. Martin O. Sabo
(D-MN) that he had discussed and been questioned by an
FBI agent on August 15th -- 27 days before the 9/11 attacks, "warning
that a Boeing 747-400, which [alleged terrorist Zacarias]
Moussaoui was seeking to learn how to fly, could be used
as a bomb,’’ (Washington Post, 1-2-2002). But shockingly,
the executive also told the lawmakers that "it took
between four and six telephone calls to find an [FBI] agent
who would help," according to a letter obtained by
the Post.

In a Fox News interview hosted by Rita
Cosby on 1-3-2002, political analyst Dick Morris exposed
more governmental negligence by reporting that President
Bush "used information provided by FBI wiretaps dating
back to 1993 to determine which terrorist-related bank
accounts he would freeze in 2002," -- indicating lengthy
US intelligence prior knowledge of terrorist financial
transactions. Fox’s revelation of the additional
careless handling of critical pre-9/11 intelligence data
may yet face scrutiny in three states via courtrooms of
victim families, despite congressional oversight silence,
and a quickly legislated compensation statute making victim
families promise not to sue the government.

Given evidence of prior knowledge, insider
trading, CIA ties, and other financial relationships leading
directly into Deutschebank the question is begged as to
why "President Bush’s original Executive Order [freezing
assets] didn’t name any banks," (Washington Post,
9-29-2001). The President has the power to freeze
American monetary operations connected to global banks
with institutions in countries refusing to cooperate in
his terrorist finance probe.

On December 31, 2001, a US State Department
Memo revealed that the president again avoided dealing
with middle eastern countries -- with close ties to the
Bush family -- by announcing that assets of one German
and five Irish terrorist-linked organizations had been
frozen--but still no banks linked to the epicenter of terrorist
finances in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or the United
Arab Emirates had been touched
(http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/
pol/terror/02010202).

THE CIA, TERRORISM AND DRUG MONEY

Documented Russian organized crime connections
to money laundering also lead back to Deutschebank, Pakistan,
and terrorist financing. On September 5, 1999, the German
newspaper Weld am Sonntag quoted Deutschebank CEO Rolf
Breuer saying, "It could be that we were abused as
an intermediate coordinating point" in the fast-developing
Russian money laundering scandal. Deutschebank and its
US affiliate, Bankers Trust (BT) filed "suspicious
transaction" reports about Russian clients, as BT
had "correspondent banking" relationships with
Russia’s Inkombank, which "allegedly had ties to organized
crime," according to USA Today (8-27-1999). Moreover,
an Inner City Press story (9-11-1999) also revealed that
German magazine Der Spiegel quoted Breuer as admitting
that it was "possible" his bank was "misused" as
an intermediary for money laundering.

The FT Asia Wire report (8-10-2001) suggested
that at least 30 Pakistan Army and Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) officials, serving and retired have accumulated wealth
through heroin smuggling. In pervious stories, FTW and
other news agencies have thoroughly documented that the
Pakistani ISI is a creation and surrogate of the Central
Intelligence Agency.

The FT report also revealed that "Pakistani
residents are allowed to maintain dollar accounts with
no questions asked about the origin of the money and about
its liability for income tax." FT added that "the
total amount of dollars in private circulation since the
military regime came to power was almost equal to that
in the government coffers, if not more...[and] largely,
if not totally, derived from the heroin trade."

Additional direct CIA and Deutschebank
ties to heroin smuggling and money laundering were also
revealed by the FT story. "In the 1980s, at the instance
[sic] of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Internal
Political Division of the [Pakistani] Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI), headed by Brig Imtiaz... started a cell for the
use of heroin for covert actions. This cell promoted the
cultivation of opium and the extraction of heroin in Pakistan
as well as in those parts of Afghanistan under Mujahedeen
control for being smuggled into the Soviet-controlled areas
to get the Soviet troops addicted.

"After the withdrawal of the Soviets,
ISI’s [Pakistani] heroin cell started using its network
of refineries and smugglers to send heroin to the West
and use the money to supplement its legitimate economy...After
capturing power on October 12, 1999, Gen. Pervez Musharraf
had Brig Imtiaz, because of his proximity to Mr. Nawaz
Sharif, arrested and prosecuted for having assets disproportionate
to his known sources of income...He was convicted by a
court on July 31, 2001 (52 days before the 9/11 attacks),
and jailed for eight years.

"According to evidence produced in
the court by the National Accountability Bureau, Brig Imtiaz
had foreign exchange bearer certificates worth $20 million,
a Pakistani rupee account in the Union Bank with a balance
of Rs 2.13 billion, a dollar account in Deutschebank with
a balance of $19.1 million, five residential houses, five
commercial units and three shops. This huge wealth was
allegedly accumulated by him through heroin smuggling."

BAHRAIN, KUWAIT AND DEUTSCHEBANK -
THE DOOR TO HARKEN ENERGY

According to attorney Matthew Lee of Inner
City Press (ICP), after 9/11, regulators in Luxembourg,
former headquarters of the notorious Pakistani Bank of
Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), circulated a
list of five banks, in addition to President Bush’s US
Executive Order of September 23rd, freezing the accounts
of suspected terrorist-connected individuals and organizations.

In Part
II of the Profits of Death series the US government’s
ongoing scrutiny of terrorist banking was documented
in an AP story by Catherine Wilson. The story provided
clear indication that US intelligence agencies routinely
monitor banking transactions in terrorist-related cases.
Wilson wrote about the current prosecution of Egyptians
in a case connected to former Goldman Sachs and Deutschebank
securities trader Kevin Ingram’s attempt to launder heroin
and cash for the illegal sale of weapons to Islamic terrorists.
She added that "numerous promised wire transfers
never arrived, but there were discussions of foreign
bankers taking payoffs to move the money to purchase
weapons into the United States..."

Moreover, the AP story never questioned
how the federal agents knew the names of particular banks
and bankers, so as not to arouse suspicion on the part
of Kevin Ingram and the other Middle Eastern accomplices,
because the bankers had previously been "in-the-loop" of
drug money laundering and illegal arms sales.

The Bush Administration would necessarily
have to be concerned if congressional investigations of
Deutschebank ties to Faysal Islamic Bank of Bahrain and
Kuwait Finance House started to dredge up and revive old
financial investigations into the 1991 probe of Harken
Energy.

AN INSIDE TRADER DIRECTS PROBE OF
INSIDE TRADERS - THE MOTHER OF ALL ENRONS

One reason why the Administration has
not frozen the assets of the two banks in Kuwait and Bahrain
with correspondent relationships with Deutschebank leads
directly to Harken.

The probe in question is tied to Bahrain
and Kuwait, and directly involves George W. Bush and SEC
lawyers appointed by his father. According to SEC
records, on four separate occasions President George W.
Bush disregarded federal statutes by failing to file insider
stock trade reports on a timely basis, back-dating one
trade by some four months. (Harken Energy SEC Abstract
Filing, transaction date: 6-22-1990; Oil stock sale made
41 days prior to Iraq's attack on Kuwait -- $848,560 profit,
filing date: 3-4-1991- 8 1/2 months late and reported to
the SEC two days after Gulf War was over on 3-2-1991; Harken
Energy SEC Abstract Filing, transaction date: 6-16-89,
filing date: 10-23-1989 -- 17 weeks late.) [Sources: Wall
Street Journal, 4-4-1991 and 9-28-99; Time, 10-28-1991;
US News, 3-16-1992; Associated Press, 10-28-94; Houston
Post, 10-18-1994.]

The younger Bush denied the charge of
insider trading in spite of his positions on the Harken
Energy board of directors, audit committee, and stock restructuring
panel. He added that he had no idea Harken was going to
get an audit report full of red ink until weeks after he
had made his stock sale.

During December 1999 into January 2000,
journalist Tom Flocco’s former research associate, Mario
Calabrese, repeatedly called the SEC requesting copies
of George W. Bush’s original Harken Energy stock filings. After
some 3 1/2 weeks of calls made during the critical Florida
Supreme Court and US Supreme Court arguments deciding the
Bush-Gore election, SEC representative Linda Thompson called
Mr. Calabrese on January 14, 2001 to confirm that all original
Bush SEC documents had been destroyed. Thompson said that "the
dates you requested have all met their (six-year) retention
time." It is possible that copies are still
available via major search engines.

The future president completed his key
insider trade eight days before Harken announced a $23
million second quarter corporate loss and about six weeks
before the invasion. Having just profited by nearly $1
million -- representing a 200% insider windfall -- George
Jr. watched Harken stock take a nosedive on the bad news.
Thus, Harken Energy, a Houston oil company doing business
in Bahrain, wherein some of his father’s largest contributors
also maintained substantial stock positions, made George
W. his first million which served as seed money for his
upcoming Texas Rangers deal.

The April 4, 1991 Wall Street Journal
added, "Mr. Bush did not return their phone calls
seeking comment, and the Bush White House tersely said ‘It
doesn’t comment on the activities of the president’s children.’" Moreover,
the SEC also declined to comment, according to The New
York Times [3-9-1992].

The chairman of the SEC at the time was
Richard Breedon, former lawyer with Houston firm of Baker
and Botts. Breedon had served as deputy counsel to Bush
41 when he was Vice President under Ronald Reagan.

Moreover, the SEC investigation of George
W. was led by general counsel James R. Doty who, according
to a UPI report, mysteriously neglected to interview any
of the Harken directors -- including the younger Bush --
regarding "enforcement" oversight. Doty
had previously served as George W. Bush’s personal lawyer
during Bush 43’s purchase of the Texas Rangers baseball
franchise.

BUSH IN BAHRAIN - PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

In October 1991, Time Magazine questioned
why the tiny country of Bahrain would stake so much of
its financial future on Harken Energy, which it labeled
an "obscure, money-losing company with no refineries
and no experience in offshore oil exploration." The
magazine also noted that oil insiders speculated that Bahrain’s
rulers saw the arrangement as a way to gain influence with
the Bush Administration.

In January 1991, The Village Voice reported
a potential nexus regarding foreign policy and personal
financial interests as, in 1990, the Bush Administration
signed an agreement with Bahrain that chose the small country
as the permanent principal allied base in the Middle East,
although it was some 200 miles away from the hostilities
in Iraq and Kuwait.

The military base deal came right after
Harken announced its January 30, 1990 joint oil-drilling
venture with Bahrain, suggesting that the elder Bush’s
contributors and his son, the future President of the United
States, were involved in personal financial business involving
Harken, while also making decisions -- including dispatching
Ambassador April Glaspie to tell Saddam Hussein that it’s
actions vis a vis Kuwait were none of the US’s business
-- that led directly to the Gulf War.

And neither Bush let the press know that
they had permitted Kuwait and Bahrain to infuse $19.6 million
in foreign cash to hire US public relations firm Hill & Knowlton
to lobby Congress and the American people into a war frenzy
against Iraq.

A former US ambassador to Bahrain, Sam
Zakhem, funneled $7.7 million in advertising and lobbying
dollars through two front groups: Coalition for Americans
at Risk (a former front group for the contras in Nicaragua)
and Freedom Task Force. The Iran-Contra front group prepared
and placed TV and newspaper ads and had 50 speakers available
for pro-war rallies and publicity events. However, neither
disclosed Bahrain as the source of the money. [Source:
O'Dwyer's Foreign Agent Registration Act Report, October
1991 and "Flacking for the Emir," by Arthur E.
Rowse, The Progressive, October 1991]

AN ILLEGAL PRIVILEGE TO "NOT" RELEASE
DOCUMENTS

On March 16, 1992, US News & World
Report reported, "according to documents on file with
the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bush 43’s position
on the Harken (restructuring) committee gave him detailed
knowledge of the company’s deteriorating financial condition." Spokesmen
from Texas Gov. Ann Richards’ campaign asked, "Was
this a real investigation, or was it a whitewash of an
insider stock sale by the son of the sitting president?" UPI
noted that "while Bush claims the [conflicted] SEC
investigation absolved him of illegal insider trading,
he has refused to release the investigation files."

Now President Bush has continued his practice
of hiding information from Congress and the American people.
On September 18th he asserted "Executive Privilege" in
a proclamation refusing to release his father’s vice-presidential
and presidential papers as required by law. This is a violation
of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. What those
documents might have revealed remains a mystery.

Even though Bush has since yielded on
a portion of the Reagan-Bush papers, it seems unlikely
that Congress will push for records that may reopen Harken
energy in the past or shed light on Enron in the present.
In the meantime all the profits of death remain hidden
behind a wall of government secrecy. -- Tom Flocco is a
freelance writer and researcher. Email: TomFlocco@cs.com

I have been reading From Wilderness but
never knew you know so much. I am astonished to note that
we in the east are so ignorant about the ways the US administration
and their minions are going.

To add my two 'kowry' worth of input.
While working with the USAID on a poppy-elimination project
in Pakistan, I accompanied one AID official on an agriculture
field day in the mountain regions of the country. I was
also doing as interpreter between the American and the
farming community to whom he was to tell them the worth
of growing traditional crops instead of poppy. One farmer
when got fed up with the long talk, said "OK we will
grow wheat and maize if you give us such good seeds as
you previously gave of poppy. The AID man expressed his
surprise at this remark. He was soon made quiet by another
expert a Pakistani saying, he as a young boy was member
of 4-H Club run by Village Aid, the forerunner of USAID
was taught how to prick a poppy pod and collect the dried
sap from it. Yet another person said he recollects that
the Village Aid people use to distribute poppy seeds among
the farmers and would buy back the opium crop...

Another important news. Mr. Ayub Afridi
a big drug baron from Pakistan who spent three terms in
the US for drug trafficking, when returned to Pakistan
was picked up tried and sentenced to under go another term
of seven years for the same offence. But when the US administration
saw the end war on Taliban, Pakistan administration on
the very quiet released Mr. Afridi when he had only been
in jail for a few weeks' time. Again most of the powerful
persons that are holding control at many places in Afghanistan
after the fall of Taliban are the same drug barons who
fueled their civil war from the drug money.

Taliban had ordered no poppy to be grown
in areas under control. Afghanistan supplied 80 percent
of world output of opium, from which heroin is extracted….
We in Peshawar a place of attraction for drug addicts,
did not fail to notice the almost starking absence of addicts
lying about along streets any more. Previously one could
count over two dozen addicts lying about at one spot. I
fear those scenes will again appear when the ban on poppy
has gone.